Businesses mostly spend a lot of time and effort to acquire new customers.
But what then?
Preserving customers’ presence is the main game of inches. It’s essential to keep them stick around for a good long time—it is disappointing when new customers visit once and then do not return.
If you’re responsible for a SaaS company, you are probably having a fear of churn more often than having a fear of height. That’s because customer churn is a scary, scary thing.
That’s why businesses must be aware of the fact that they should prevent and decrease customer churn.
So, how to reduce customer churn? Think about the following 4 strategies for reducing churn as much as possible.
1. Design an Effective Customer Onboarding Process to Improve Product Adoption
The phase of the customer lifecycle that gets the most attention is Customer Onboarding, yet ironically (or tragically), most people fail to understand what onboarding really is, and few do it well. (Murphy, Lincoln)
As the customer success advisor, Murphy Lincoln stated in his Customer Onboarding: How to Design and Implement an Effective Onboarding Process, seeds of churn are planted early. Effective customer onboarding should bring customers their initial desired outcome. Otherwise, churn is much more likely to come.
So, create a path to this desired outcome, and in this way, you will definitely ensure that customers experience of using your service will inspire them to stay.
2. Provide Long-Term Contracts
Long-term contract -loyalty is the key.
For sure, monthly subscriptions are the lifeblood of your product. However, annual subscriptions reduce churn and increase cash flow, as Tucker Dowson stated in his article on Annual vs Monthly Billing.
Therefore, long-term contracts benefit both the customer and the business. It is one of the obvious ways of reducing churn as customers sign on for a year rather than signing on month by month. The continuity keeps the customer over a certain period of time.
3. Personal Touch
To keep customers around, show them special care. Delivering personalized touch makes a huge difference. Care for their special days, offer great experiences and keep in touch with them.
Show that you don’t forget about them by utilizing the following communication methods.
- Birthday messages -maybe even gifts
- Mails that indicating that “As the company’s founder, I wanted to thank you for giving us a try personally…” or “I know how busy things can be. So I want to remind you I’ll be happy to help if you need any.”
- Case studies! Announce their success story and that how much you two go well.
There’s a difference between saying that you deliver personal service and actually doing it. The lack of emotional connection with a customer can lead to churn. So, you should be the company that actually provide exceptional experiences that keep customers in your product.
4. Make Your Product Irreplaceable
Last but not least, if you have something that people can’t get anywhere else, you can ensure that customers and clients will continue to choose your product and service.
Solve their problems in your unique way that they cannot do without you. Develop your own unique property and special services.
Overall Idea
There is no survival for SaaS companies without continuous customers -continuous revenue.
Reducing customer churn is not that easy to be done overnight. You need to build up your strategy step by step.
Following the above-mentioned strategies will definitely help you to reduce churn.
Never forget that it is easier to sell to existing customers as they tend to spend more than new customers.
Need SaaS marketing tips apart from reducing churn ideas? Check our 5 Remarkable SaaS Marketing Strategies with 5 Inspiring Quotes.
